Is Chemical Castration a Viable Option for Child Sex Offenders?

As a society we now have to solve this problem and many solutions are being proposed and enacted but how effective are they? Most states now have sex offender registries and many cities have living restrictions on sex offenders with more and more following the pattern. Are we creating social outcasts with these restrictive and overbearing living sanctions?

All these questions lead me the title of this article. Therapists on this matter agree that sexual offenders, especially those they committed their crimes against children cannot be cured, or can they?

I don't remember how I happened upon this subject but I did and I read several forums and other resources on these men who claimed that they "had overly aggressive feelings" and were "overly sexual and sometimes violent" and they blamed it on excessive testosterone. So I set about investigating if this was a viable option for curing sex offenders.

Six states have laws on the books for this sort of "treatment." Those states are California, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, and Montana. California was the first state to use chemical castration as a punishment for pedophiles. In California the law allows judges the ability to require first-time offenders to undergo chemical castration, after a second offense; treatment is mandatory. In Iowa and Florida chemical castration is available in all cases involving serious sex offenses. Even so, as it is in California, treatment is currently mandatory after a second offense.

During the time when the Florida legislature was considering the legislation in 1997, although it passed. The ACLU wrote a slashing article on their brief stating the following: "The ACLU of Florida, which stood virtually alone in opposing the bill and which is expected to file its own legal challenge to the new law in the future, argued that the involuntary use of chemical castration is unconstitutional. Our position essentially is that:

1. Mandatory chemical castration interferes with an offender's fundamental right to procreate and the right to refuse medical treatment.

2. Although judges will be required under the new law to have the inmate submit to a medical examination to determine whether he is "an appropriate candidate for the treatment," it will be the trial judge, not the examining physician, who will make the ultimate decision whether the inmate must receive weekly injections of this non-FDA approved, experimental drug as a condition of probation or parole.

3. Judges, not doctors or even the convicted sex offender himself, will determine when, or if, the use of the experimental drug can be discontinued.

4. "Cruel and unusual punishment" analysis strongly suggests that mandatory chemical castration is not a medical treatment, but rather an additional form of punishment for sex offenders.

5. The state may not, without their consent, expose individuals to potentially dangerous medical side effects. The physiological effects of DepoProvera (the most effective drug used for this) include temporary diminution of erections and ejaculations and a reduction in sperm count. The drug may also cause diabetes, gallstones, hypertension, fatigue, weight gain, cold sweats, nightmares and muscle weakness. The long term effects are unknown.

6. Determined sex offenders can, in all probability, reverse DepoProvera's effects with other drugs.

7. Castration fails to treat the psychological roots of sexually deviant behavior.

8. Unlike other conditions of parole or probation, submission to the treatment is not subject to the statutory maximum periods of incarceration. It can be ordered for life."

However Dewayne Wickham in his September 3, 2001 article for USATODAY, proposed an alternative solution to chemical castration. "Instead of dumping such sexual predators into prison for long periods of time or forcing them to undergo chemical castration, judges should commit them to high-security mental facilities where they can get psychiatric help in combination with drugs to reduce their sex drives. While chemical castration can turn off a predator's physical urges for a time, psychological counseling is needed to suppress the mental addiction that drives their deviant behavior.

But don't expect this to happen. For most politicians, the financial cost of such a fix is too great and the political return is too small. Most people care little about what happens to criminals once they are locked away. While taking sexual predators off the streets is an obsession of many folks, few people care about the criminals' need for psychiatric therapy.

Without such help, sexual predators are doomed to repeat their crimes. Lawmakers who think that castration alone will change this outcome are fooling themselves - and the people who put them in office."

Per usual there are two sides to this story and I hope that I have adequately explained both satisfactorily leaving you to decide? In my further research around the internet I found a gentlemen who fully explained his own surgical castration. He wished to be free of the excessive sex drive and aggressive emotions of being a fully functioning male. He claims everything from the weight gain to the increase in feminine mannerism, the reduced sex drive and the calmed emotions. While he viewed it as positive he did admit that he could no longer do the work he formerly did due to his lack of upper body strength. He reports that due to his surgical castration his sex drive has largely disappeared except for a few nocturnal concerns. While Chemical Castration is not supposed to have the permanency of surgical obviously these side effects could definitely be psychologically damaging for the obvious reasons.

This is a mixed bag of cause and effects and could pose long-term effects on the sex offenders. On the one hand, this could solve the symptom but are we really cure the disease?

Sources consulted:
Dewayne Wickham, September 3, 2001, article for USATODAY
ACLU 1997 Policy Briefing (http://www.aclufl.org/about/newsletters/1997/chem.cfm)
Jeffrey Kirchmeier's contribution to Wikipedia (Mr. Kirchmeier is a professor law specializing in the death penalty at the City University of New York)
Kevin Giordano's May 1, 2000 article for salon.com (http://archive.salon.com/health/feature/2000/03/01/castration/)